Detour

Detour, American low-budget crime drama that was virtually ignored upon its initial release in 1945 but was later championed by film critics and such directors as Martin Scorsese as one of the high points of the film noirgenre.

Al Roberts (played by Tom Neal) is a hitchhiker who assumes a benefactor’s identity when the man dies during their cross-country ride. He soon finds himself forced to continue the ploy by a scheming femme fatale (Ann Savage) who wants Roberts to try to claim an inheritance owed to the dead man.

Although Detour was made by Producers Releasing Corporation, one of several studios that specialized in cheaply made B-films, and thus was a “poverty row” movie, it has the distinction of being the first such film to be preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Shot in only six days and running a scant 67 minutes, the film has been praised as a prime example of how to tell a story economically and efficiently but with a cinematic style that transcends a limited budget. Director Edgar G. Ulmer had started in movies as a set designer on many of the classics of German Expressionist film, including Metropolis (1927).